Thickened slurry materials are increasingly being handled in mining and mineral processing industries, providing benefits of reduced water consumption, reduced impact to the environment, and benefits for turn-down and re-start of pipelines conveying viscous slurries. High viscosity materials are also widely used in the other industries, such as oil industries (pumping heavy crude oil), power industries (pumping fly ash) and polymer industries.
Due to increased friction loss with high viscosities, excessively high pressure and power are often used for conveying viscous materials. Sometimes the pressure required is so high that it makes the capital cost for the pumping equipment and the operating energy cost unacceptably high.
It is desired to address or ameliorate one or more shortcomings or disadvantages associated with prior techniques for transporting viscous fluids or slurries or to at least provide a useful alternative thereto.